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Joint patrolling on border with Bangladesh |
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Patrolling will also be strengthened along the India-Bangladesh border to prevent the movement of terrorists and to check crime, officials said last week. “There is a shortage of security forces along the border and so there is the need for joint patrolling of the frontier,” Gurbachan Jagat, Director General of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) said in Guwahati.
Jagat said Bangladesh had “endorsed” the move for joint patrolling of the 4,096-km border. The BSF Chief was in Dhaka last month and met with Rezaul Haider, Director General of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).
In April last year, BDR troopers entered Pyrdiwah, a village in India’s northeasten state of Meghalaya, and took 28 BSF troopers hostage. The intrusion led to a bloody border skirmish that left 16 BSF and three BDR troopers dead. “Both sides have now adopted a forgive-and-forget policy,” Jagat said. “We have invited the BDR to send their troopers and officers to India for training as we have some good institutions here.”
He said Indian paramilitary presence along its borders would continue to be thin till the central Government redeployed 50 BSF battalions that are currently engaged in internal security duties.
“The problem of inadequate border guards to man the frontiers will continue as long 50 BSF battalions deployed in various parts of the country for internal security are not replaced by other forces.” The unfenced border with Bangladesh along India’s insurgency-hit northeast has become a transit point for separatists. Indian intelligence officials say rebel groups operating in Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura have bases inside Bangladesh from where they carry out hit-and-run guerrilla strikes.
A number of rebel leaders are believed to have been arrested in Bangladesh in the recent past. Bangladesh has officially denied that any rebel group has bases inside the country. Cross-border movement of separatists apart, the porous border has facilitated the smuggling of narcotics and other items, leading to a spurt in criminal activities in the northeast.
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